The inventor of the modern computer and the Blues Brothers are among the figures that could be memorialized through public art as part of a capital-improvement project over the next few years on and near the Great River Plaza of Rock Island.

Renaissance Rock Island has identified eight pieces of the city's heritage that it wants to spotlight through art in conjunction with infrastructure improvements.

"We're just telling our stories," said Dan Carmody, executive director of the Renaissance Rock Island. "It's basically just some enhanced public art."

Carmody downplayed the importance and scope of the project, but just as Davenport's River Renaissance project builds on and plays off the downtown's identity and history, so does this undertaking. Among the people and histories to be tackled through public art are computer inventor John Atanasoff, the musical heritage of Rock Island, local gangster John Looney (who will be portrayed by Paul Newman in the upcoming movie The Road to Perdition), arts advocate and artist Lloyd Schoeneman, longtime Rock Island librarian Ellen Gale, and the area's lumbering and railroad histories.

The project's timeline targets having infrastructure and several public-art projects done by the time of the Grand Excursion celebration in Rock Island on June 25, 2004, the 150th anniversary of a 1,200-person entourage traveling by steamboat from Rock Island to St. Paul, Minnesota. The original event was itself meant to commemorate a momentous undertaking: the first railroad to reach the Mississippi River.

Infrastructure components of the local project include replacing or repairing lighting, tiles, temporary and permanent planters, sidewalks, sewers, canvases, and a parking lot in the Great River Plaza. "The Plaza's essentially worn out," said Bob Hawes, the city's director of public works. "It's showing 27 years of wear and tear."

The City of Rock Island has already committed funding to the first phase of the project at approximately $450,000, Hawes said. A second phase of improvements should cost another $450,000, with final infrastructure costs totaling between $2 million and $2.5 million. All but $50,000 of that is expected to come from the city. The Rock Island City Council is scheduled to review the second phase of improvements at its May 20 meeting, and Carmody said he's seeking a funding commitment from the city for two fiscal years.

Monetary sources for the public-art projects, which should cost between $500,000 and $1 million, have not been identified, Carmody said. Schoeneman's family and friends have raised some money for public art in his memory, and Modern Woodmen has shown an interest in helping to fund art commemorating the area's history in lumbering.

The public-art projects will spotlight a history that's more colorful and speculative than one might expect - most obviously in the underworld presence of Looney.

In addition, the musical heritage that will be commemorated with a mural, sculpture, and fountain might include musicians such as Louis Armstrong who played here, but it will also mark the birthplace of Jake and Elwood - the Blues Brothers. Fans of the original Blues Brothers movie might remember Joliet as the duo's hometown, but Carmody argues that the group's first record cites Rock Island as home.

There's a bit of contention involved in what's being called the "Roadhouse Breakthrough," marking the brainstorm that resulted in the modern computer. Iowa State Professor John Atanasoff, who liked to drive and drink to clear his head, in 1937 stopped in a tavern in Rock Island County - no one knows for sure which one - and there wrote four principles for modern computing on a cocktail napkin. He and a graduate student built the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC), which was completed in 1942.

But recognition was slow in coming. For decades, the ENIAC (completed in 1946 and located at the University of Pennsylvania) was considered the first modern computer. It was certainly the first modern computer with a patent.

But in 1973, a federal-court judge declared the ENIAC patent invalid, saying that its makers had taken ideas from Atanasoff.

Even then, though, some ENIAC proponents claimed the ABC didn't work. That assertion was put to rest five years ago, when Iowa State researchers painstakingly re-built Atanasoff's machine, which successfully performed several calculations.

The "Roadhouse Breakthrough" public art is the farthest along. A committee led by artist Bruce Walters is exploring ideas for a fountain, sculpture, mural, and kiosk. "It celebrates the 'A-ha!' moment," Carmody said. "The energy level on that committee is very high."

Walters said the public art needs to reflect the 1930s but also look to the future. He developed a handful of concepts to show the possibilities of an Atanasoff monument, but he said the committee is currently developing a process to contact artists who will develop their own ideas.

Walters added that he has difficulty believing that so few people know that the Quad Cities are arguably the birthplace of modern computing. "It's one of those 'I can't believe it' stories," he said. "This is almost a fountainhead. It [the concepts Atanasoff formulated while in the Quad Cities] is a key, key part of the story."

Carmody said he hopes three or four of the public-art pieces can be completed by summer 2004. A commitment to public art, he said, began last year with the installation of benches painted by students in the Quad City Arts MetroArts program. "Instead of doing something major every 20 years," Carmody said, "we decided to do something significant every year or every other year."

The current public-improvement project is a smaller version of a package proposed several years ago. In 1999, the City of Rock Island sought state funding for $4.5 million in improvements. While this project is more modest, its focus on public art should draw people to the area rather than just maintain its infrastructure. "It's not as ambitious, but it's more compelling," Carmody said.

It should also be less disruptive. If all the funding comes through, the first two phases of construction are expected to begin August 15 and be finished by May 15. Business owners "were glad we were trying to work around the peak summer season," Carmody said.

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